What We Have Been Learning - Week Beginning 9th January 2017
Rainbows – We enjoyed the story ‘Dinosaurs and All That Rubbish.’ The children were very observant and thoughtful about
this book, which explores the importance of looking after our environment and there were lots of super ideas for ways we can
do this. We have a new ‘Story Castle’ where the children have been dressing up as many different story characters. They have
been collecting chairs and assembling as an audience to ‘watch the show.’ Lots of story-telling has been happening and
drawing of ideas onto ‘story boards.’ We have listened to different versions of ‘The Enormous Turnip’, comparing them,
describing the setting and making predictions. We thought about how everyone helped and worked as a team. Some children
worked very hard to write about the story. We explored real turnips and other root vegetables, and have enjoyed being
shopkeepers and customers at our new fruit and vegetable shop. Lots of children made price tags and labels for the food. We
have also been describing and making our own repeating patterns with colours and shapes.
Year 1 – This week in English the children have been learning about punctuation and grammar. The children became
detectives and highlighted full stops and exclamation marks in familiar stories. They then wrote their own sentences and their
learning partner had to find them and check that the punctuation was in the correct place. Later in the week the children wrote
words in the past tense and have begun to think about conjunctions (and/but/so). In Maths the children have learnt about odd
and even numbers and were able to put given numbers into the land of 'Mr Odd' or 'Mrs Even'. Children sorted houses along
Odd and Even Street to 20 and remembered the rule for sorting numbers beyond 20. In History we have been continuing our
learning about the Wright Brothers. We have learnt about their interest in flight and when and how the first flight happened. The
children then found out about Samuel Franklin Cody who was the first pilot in the United Kingdom to fly a plane. In Geography
the children are investigating seasonal weather. In R.E the children have learnt about why Jewish families celebrate Shabbat.
Next week in Maths the children will be focusing on o'clock and half past times
Year 2 – Year 2 have had a busy week of learning. In Maths we have been learning about time. We have secured our
knowledge on o'clock and half past and have moved on to learn about quarter to and quarter past. Children played games with
their learning partners and others to change the times on their own mini clocks and challenge each other to get to the right time
quickest. We learnt how many minutes there are in an hour and we concentrated on counting in 5s around our clocks. We
related our learning to fractions, halves and quarters and we will move on to learning more about fractions next week. In
English we have been learning about punctuation and grammar. We have been asking and writing questions and using
question marks as well as full stops, exclamation marks and commas. Children have been using physical punctuation to
support their learning and have been challenging each other to fill in the missing punctuation. We have been learning about
tense and working collaboratively to improve pieces of writing where the tense has been wrong. In Computing we have been
progressing with our learning on algorithms. We used the laptops and 2simple to test algorithms which moved a toy on the
screen. Next week we will use iPads to create algorithms using scratch junior.
Year 3 – Year 3 have been busy researching and writing up their product outcomes based on the Life and Miracles of Jesus.
The children have been finding out a lot of information on Jesus. In Maths the two groups have been focusing on fractions,
finding fractions of numbers and shapes. The children are also enjoying reading the BFG- both for Guided Reading and
English. Many of them have been inspired by the story. If possible, we would encourage you to read the story with your child. In
PSHE, the children have been thinking about words associated with strong feelings and sharing their own experiences of
feeling different emotions. The children have discussed how they can seek support from others when needed.
Year 4 - When exploring a range of information texts, the children noted difficult or technical words and terms. They found the
glossary very helpful in understanding the texts, especially when explaining a text to others. We carried out mini-activities and
quizzes, which the children found challenging, to establish the need for alphabetical order and ordering words with the same
first and second letter. When the children write their own information text, they will be able to “bold” or highlight key words and
create a glossary.
Year 5 – We have continued our Journey of Discovery, this time learning about the geocentric and heliocentric theories of
planetary movement. We role-played the historical discoveries and different astronomers that made them, which have led to
our understanding today. We needed to go back to the time of the Ancient Greeks and Ptolemy whose idea was based on the
Geocentric Theory - that the Earth was the centre of the universe and the sun and all other planets orbited around the Earth.
We discovered that some astronomers who had different ideas about the movement of the planets found it difficult to persuade
people to believe their theories and were persecuted, even though they had scientific evidence to justify their new ideas. It was
finally Copernicus who theorised that it was in fact the Sun that was the centre of the Solar System, the heliocentric theory, and
that all planets, including Earth orbited around the sun. However, it was not until Galileo, who used a telescope for the first time
to look at the sky, put forward his theory that it began to be accepted that the Earth was not at the centre.
Year 6 – In English this week, Year 6 have been learning to write balanced reports. They began by deciding on an activity they
would like to go to, on a day out, for example: the seaside, a theme park, a museum or art gallery, a zoo and an outdoor
adventure park. Once they had decided on their activity, as a group they justified their choice, followed by a discussion session
where each group's ideas could be challenged. This enabled the children to discover the positive and negative issues
surrounding keeping animals in zoos. In Maths, Mrs Doyle's and Miss Blundell's groups have been converting fractions to
decimals and percentages, as well as finding percentages of amounts; and Mrs Scott's group has been calculating
the perimeter and area of 2D shapes. In Science, the children investigated the functions of blood and blood vessels.